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Quantitative Characterization of Natural Rock Discontinuity Roughness In-situ and in the Laboratory

The surface roughness of unfilled rock discontinuities has a major influence on the hydro-mechanical behaviour of discontinuous rock masses. Although it is widely recognized that surface roughness is comprised of large-scale (waviness) and small-scale (unevenness) components, most investigations of surface roughness have been restricted to small fracture
surfaces (<1m2). Hence, the large-scale components of roughness are often neglected.
Furthermore, these investigations typically define roughness using two-dimensional profiles rather than three-dimensional surfaces, which can lead to biased estimates of roughness.
These limitations have led to some contradictory findings regarding roughness scale effects. This thesis aims to resolve some of these issues. The main findings indicate that
discontinuity roughness increases as a function of the sampling window size contrary to what is commonly assumed. More importantly, it is shown that the estimated roughness significantly decreases as the resolution of surface measurements decrease, which could lead to the under estimations of roughness and, consequently, discontinuity shear strength.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/18959
Date16 February 2010
CreatorsTatone, Bryan Stanley Anthony
ContributorsGrasselli, Giovanni
Source SetsUniversity of Toronto
Languageen_ca
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis

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